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Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying, “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” And reputation in business is not immune to this wisdom. What gets lost sometimes in the day-to-day, give-and-take of work is the loss of focus that the one bad deed that Mr. Franklin was referring to might have just taken place.

Ensuring that your supply chain is as efficient as it can be is not top of mind for everyone these days – but maybe it should be. Often times, we are accustomed to sit back and rely on “that’s the way we’ve always done it,” but that isn’t always the best way. Sometimes changing the way things are done is the best way to find new efficiencies and cost savings.

As each of us goes through our careers, we encounter individuals who, by the sheer force of their spirit, make our profession and our work lives better. If we’re lucky and end up in the right places, we may encounter more than one or two of these special individuals.

Site certification is becoming an increasingly popular topic of interest for local and regional economic development organizations (EDO’s) as it enables communities to market sites within their territories as being “shovel-ready”, “pad-ready” or “certified”. In order to obtain one of these designations, communities typically employ a third party site selection consulting firm and undergo an extensive due diligence process to ensure that risk is minimized for prospective clients. Site selectors conducting the due diligence work typically promote that a site can be certified within a 90-day timeframe, which appears doable for local EDO’s. This timeframe does not, however, include setbacks that can occur during this process, ultimately delaying that timeframe. Up-front planning and proactive management allow for an efficient certification process, enabling EDO’s to market their sites to prospective clients more quickly.

Some projects have a very positive personality. Communications are great. The project chemistry is great. Everyone on the project seems to click. Other projects are sleepers. They just seem to get done without anyone who is not involved noticing. Then, other projects have more challenges to them. They demand the attention and focus of management and other resources beyond the normal project team.

Quitting something “cold turkey” is very difficult to do, unless the thing you are quitting is no longer available. There are 168 hours in a week. If we get an average of 7 hours of sleep per night, that leaves 119 waking hours. So, if we are working 40 hours per week, it is one-third of our waking hours.

I attended a seminar this past week on Lean strategies. The speaker pointed out that while Lean is often thought of as a manufacturing strategy, it is applicable to any series of tasks that make up a process. So any such process, whether it is the manufacturing process, the process for running a loan application through a financial institution, or the process for designing and building a building, is a candidate for applying Lean principles.

Last month, we discussed the concept of impact fees and the steps that expanding firms can take to avoid them. This month, we will focus on the significant cost implications that water and wastewater (sanitary sewer) impact fees can have on new industrial operations, especially those using a significant amount of water and discharging a significant amount of wastewater.